Barbara Bintliff, the law library director at the University of Colorado at Boulder, has been named the director of the Tarlton Law Library and Jamail Center for Legal Research and the Joseph C. Hutcheson Professor in Law, the University of Texas School of Law has announced.
“The Tarlton Law Library has long been a leader and innovator–the law library that people look to when they want to see what’s new. One of my goals is to make sure we continue to hold that place of prominence,” said Bintliff, who has been law library director at the University of Colorado at Boulder since 1989. She received that university’s highest recognition, the Robert L. Stearns Award, in 2008 for extraordinary achievements in teaching, research and service.
Bintliff, a native Texan who will assume her position in September, is well known as a leader in the law library profession, a former president of the American Association of Law Libraries, a member of the American Law Institute, a noted teacher, scholar and consultant. She earned a master of law librarianship degree from the University of Washington, a juris doctor degree from the University of Washington School of Law and a bachelor of arts degree from Central Washington State College with highest honors.
Bintliff is also well known as a mentor and educator of law librarians–much like her predecessor, University of Texas Law Professor Roy Mersky, who died in 2008 after serving 42 years as director of the Tarlton Law Library. A few months after his death, the School of Law hired retiring Harvard Law Library Director Terry Martin as the interim director of the Tarlton Law Library and Jamail Center and a visiting professor.
“I am delighted that Barbara Bintliff has accepted our offer,” said Law School Dean Lawrence Sager. “Roy Mersky left The University of Texas School of Law an extraordinary legacy: one of the finest law libraries in world–a great center of scholarship and training. Our library is now at a pivotal point in its history, and there are few appointments more important to the Law School than that of Roy’s successor. Barbara Bintliff is a seasoned library director and a visionary, and the prospects for the Tarlton Law Library could not be brighter.”
“Barbara Bintliff is well known in the library profession,” said Martin, who was a member of the library director search committee. “At the University of Colorado she chaired both the Faculty Assembly and the Athletic Board, so she is a proven administrator. She is also a productive scholar, with a long list of contributions as an author, editor and speaker.”
Bintliff’s research interests include examining the differences between using print and electronic media for legal research, and in particular understanding how different research methods can produce divergent results. There are differences in what information is retrieved when researching the same problem in print and electronic sources and even differences when searching the same electronic database, based on how the search is performed.
